Unseen Hand

As Yemen’s civil war rages on, U.S. lawmakers are questioning America’s quiet role in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

- Jonathan Broder

 CONGRESS RARELY GETS OUTRAGED OVER AN internecine war in a distant land where American troops are not bleeding and dying. But in a rare exception, lawmakers have become deeply troubled over the Pentagon’s role in Yemen’s civil war—a conflict that has eviscerated the civilian population, provoked a deadly famine and ignited what health officials are calling the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history.

For the first time since the war began in 2015, U.S. lawmakers are taking concrete steps to halt or tightly restrict weapons sales to their allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—the leaders behind an Arab coalition fighting Yemen’s rebels, who are seen as proxies for a common enemy, Iran. Much of the damage from the war, independent observers say, has been caused by Saudi and UAE airstrikes using U.S. and British warplanes and munitions, leading human rights groups to accuse Washington and London of complicity in Yemen’s agony.

Amid such accusations, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, in late June blocked the Trump administration’s proposed $2 billion sale of smart bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. (Senate rules allow any member to hold up an arms sale. The block can be lifted by a so-called cloture vote, which requires a majority of the Senate for approval.) “I am concerned our policies are enabling...a conflict that has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” he said.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee’s Republican chairman, has also voiced his doubts about the strategy behind U.S. aid to the Arab coalition, which includes participation in a naval blockade of rebel-controlled ports.